Wired Wreck
by AndromedaAI
Summary: The safety of Greenspan Isle is known by all who live there, but sometimes you can be physically safe but not emotionally. Danielle quickly learns this, and unfortunately, she's just too good at hiding how she is feeling. Slice of life sequel to "The Improbability of Safe Harbour". post-Dark of the Moon pre-Age of Extinction AU


**Here's the next installment in the series I began with _The Improbability of Safe Harbour_! I'm so, so sorry it took so long for me to bring this about. I know I _said_ I would deliver this back in August/September, but then college came. And even though the first month was rather empty, it has quickly gotten SUPER busy. This month (November) alone, was filled from weekend to weekend. For the last three weeks, starting one Wednesday that I spent running around in a school-wide version of the Amazing Race (it wrecked my left knee to the point it clicks like a rusty cog in an old clock all the time now), I've spent nearly every school day in classes from 8:30am to 4:10pm.**

 **So I'm posting now :) I'm sorry it is so late! I just wanted to post it so you could read it because I'm going to be gone all day again from 5am (because I have to be at the school by 6:30am) so that me and my class can photograph the sunrise and people standing _on the roof of the four-story foot dorm building_.**

 **Hope you like! I was inspired to write this after I experienced my first anxiety attack during class :( It was not fun.**

 **If you haven't read _The Improbability of Safe Harbour_ yet, please do. If you don't, you'll be really confused :|**

* * *

 **Wired Wreck**

* * *

Danielle's hands trembled as she helped Jetta into her raincoat. It took her longer to grasp her daughter's zipper than she liked, as her fingers twitched against her will. Rain pattered against the nearby window, a sound that was normally a salve to her soul though today it was anything but. She let out a shaky sigh as she straightened and gave her daughter a smile. "Ready?" she asked.

Jetta beamed up at her. "Ready!" It was Jetta's first day of school – she had been accepted into the small institution that was being run for the children of those who were forced to live on Greenspan Isle. With Sara Lennox's help, she had been able to get her daughter enrolled despite the fact that school had already started. It had been suspiciously easy to get her signed up, easier than she had thought due to the fact that her daughter had been homeschooled since kindergarten.

She was thankful that she was going to have the house to herself for most of the day – it felt like her body wanted to catch up on the sleep she knew she had missed out on when the stress of their abrupt move to the island kept her up at night. It also felt like there was a flu coming on, which called for soothing teas, plenty of water, and bedrest.

A part of her looked forward to laying around and doing nothing as she put on the longest TV show she'd be able to get her hands on. _Stargate SG-1_ seemed like something that might distract her from the feelings that came with being under the weather. Of course, she didn't have it with her—she owned all ten seasons, but she was forced to leave them behind when they had to flee from their home. She had seen a boxed set of the show in the Family Centre, and she hoped that it was still there. She was in the mood for a good semi-cheesy military sci-fi—though she wasn't sure if it just would end up reminding her of what happened to hers and her daughter's lives.

They now _lived_ in a military sci-fi, if it were simple enough to _assign_ a genre to the life they now lived.

Danielle grabbed an umbrella from the umbrella basket at the base of the hat tree by the door. She opened the front door and ushered her daughter out, making sure she had her backpack on her back before she followed her out. She firmly shut the door behind them before she snapped the umbrella open and jogged down the stairs after Jetta, who was quickly making her way to the curb.

Seeing her daughter's hair getting wet, Danielle snapped, "Put your hood up!"

Jetta started and gave her a wide-eyed look. But she did as she was told. The bus came and picked her up, and Danielle was quickly left standing on the curb feeling like a jerk. Her chest constricted at the feeling and guilt seemed to swamp her very being. It made her want to run after the bus and beg her daughter for forgiveness. But she was unable to make herself move, leaving her to stand outside in the rain. After a moment where she was left to think, unable to bring herself to do much else, she found she was was glad for that. Glad that she was outside, in the fresh air. Because if she had been standing inside, she would have thought that the walls were closing in on her. Already the pre-fab house that had become hers and her daughter's home and the pre-fab house next door were feeling like they were looming closer and closer to her, as if they wanted to fall on her and crush her.

The rain continued to fall, and continued to get on her nerves as she stood there. She decided to get out of the rain, but she remembered that she needed to go and get the TV show she wanted to watch and distract herself with. Her footsteps vibrated up her legs as she began to walk and they helped to quell some of the guilt, with the help of a deep breath. Unfortunately, that didn't make it go away all the way, and soon the guilt was joined by other feelings, which quickly grew more and more confusing as the seconds ticked by.

Danielle's feet carried her down the sidewalk and across the road as she continued to try and turn off those feelings and, in extension, her mind so she could stop feeling them and could get on with feeling better. As she turned onto the path that lead to the Family Centre a few minutes later, guilt swamped her again, and it only served to make her feel even worse.

Her mouth barely reacted when she caught sight of Dr. Dalca as she stepped up to the centre's front door. He waved to her with a bright smile as he crossed the parking lot to his bright blue car, and though she raised her hand and waved back, when she tried to smile in return it felt like her lips barely moved at all.

Frustration welled up inside of her at her blatant rudeness and she cursed the mood she had found herself in that morning. She ripped open one of the front glass door and did her best to keep herself from exploding in anger or bursting into tears as she marched through the lobby and into the common room.

She could see the TV show she wanted as soon as she stepped inside, but the room was filled with those she didn't wish to speak with because she was afraid her anger would let itself be known as soon as she opened her mouth.

For a moment, she considered just turning around and heading back home. It felt like a chasm had opened up between her and the bookshelf where all ten seasons of _Stargate SG-1_ sat, waiting for her, and that chasm was fraught with danger.

Staff Sergeant Robert Epps' wife, Monique, sat with Sara Lennox as they played Monopoly and chatted away off to the left with big happy smiles on their faces. General Montgomery's wife, Elisa, was slowly combing through the romance novels shelved on the far side of the stone fireplace on the right-hand wall. And Chief Warrant Officer Jorge "Fig" Figueroa was sprawled out on the lounge chair smack-dab in the middle of the room, one arm in a sling, entirely engrossed in a magazine on woodworking. Normally you wouldn't have seen Fig here in the Family Centre, but since he had broken his arm it was obvious he had been forced off duty by one of the doctors and told not to strain himself in any way.

Danielle took a deep breath, though for a moment she thought she was going to be sick as her heart thundered away in her chest, sending her stomach into a death-roll.

 _You can do this_ , she encouraged herself.

She did not know why she felt this way. An answer began to pound in her head but it was quickly blocked. Instead it was replaced with—maybe, when she went home, she would feel better.

Another deep breath and she crossed the room as fast as she could without running. She passed between Elisa and Fig and she was over by the correct bookcase before she had to take another deep breath.

By then her heart beat in her chest so hard it felt like it was _trying_ to encourage her stomach to turn inside out. The common room, which was usually quite large and cool, now felt tiny, with the walls closing in, and as hot as a sauna. Sweat poured down her face and her hands were shaking so violently that she was barely able to grasp the pen and the notebook she needed to write in order to check out the TV series.

All she could hear by the time she was finished was the pounding of her blood in her ears.

 _I'm going to be sick_ , she finally admitted as she snatched up what she came for and raced for the door. In her mind's eye she mapped out a direct path to the nearest bathroom, and she practically crashed in through the door of the handicapped bathroom.

She barely made it to the toilet.

* * *

What felt like hours later, someone knocked on the bathroom door.

After emptying her stomach into the toilet, Danielle had fallen back and slid down into a sitting position. She should have been disgusted that she was so close to the floor, that she was _touching_ it, because it was a dirty public bathroom floor, but she couldn't bring herself to even care.

She hardly felt anything other than tight muscles and sweat and heat and nerves and her uncontrollable racing heart. She hardly heard the knock on the door, but she did. It took her longer to turn her head in the direction of the door than she liked, and it took her even longer to open her mouth and say, "Go away."

Danielle couldn't remember if she had ever felt this numb, this scattered—not since her husband was killed.

"Danielle?" It was Sara. "Are you okay?"

 _I can take care of myself,_ she thought frantically. _It'll go away. I'll feel better. I just need to be alone._ "I-I'm fine," she replied, before silently cursing how weak her voice was. Unfortunately, her voice echoed the state of her mind, which was thick with fog.

The lock on the door began to rattle, and for the first time since she was a teenager Danielle considered letting out a long and foul swear. Sara wasn't going to let this go, despite the fact that she was 28 years old and could take care of herself. And it was Sara's turn that week to maintain the Family Centre, so she had the keys to the bathrooms and the storage rooms.

A shaky sigh of defeat escaped her as the door swung open and Sarah stepped inside. She watched as she glanced into the toilet and blanched. "Danielle, what's the matter?" she asked as she looked her in the eye. She crouched down and grasped her wrists gently. "You're shaking!"

Danielle blinked owlishly. As soon as Sara had pointed it out, the feeling of her entire body trembling was brought back to her full attention.

It took her a few moments to come to terms with this, but when it finally hit her she started to cry, much to her everlasting embarrassment.

* * *

"There, I have adjusted the focal point of the projector," Perceptor said, looking up from the screen on his left forearm.

Wheeljack gave him a thumbs-up, a very human gesture, from across the lab. The human scientists working there that day stepped back and watched them intensely from their high perches on the Cybertronian-sized tables around the room.

Wheeljack collapsed down into his alt-mode and a small form made entirely of light began to form a few feet from his front bumper. Perceptor stared intensely at it, not daring to look away lest it fade away again.

With a strange hum reminiscent of the transporter sound from that _Star Trek_ show the humans were so fond of, the form solidified into that of a man—average-sized with wild white-grey hair, wearing a long white lab coat and sporting an appearance reminiscent of Doc Brown, a character in a popular human movie called _Back to the Future_. The light faded completely until the man looked like any other man and nothing like a solid-light projection, which it clearly was.

"Excellent!" Perceptor beamed, watching as Wheeljack looked his new form over. "What shall we call this latest achievement?"

Wheeljack hummed. "I was thinking… 'holoform'. Ratchet created the holomatter avatar, and since he had no hand in helping us replicate the technology, it's only fair to say that our attempt at the device brought us to create something which could turn out to be radically different from his holomatter avatar."

Perceptor offered a nod, but didn't comment. He wasn't too sure how he felt about the name, but if he knew Ratchet, he knew that the medic's short temper would probably lead him to leave a sizeable wrench-sized dent in the over-enthusiastic inventor's helm if he dared to take his device's name. Wheeljack's suggestion would have to do for now.

Wheeljack's holoform disappeared and he transformed back up into his robot form. "Now, will you let me install yours? You've worked with it enough to know that it won't detonate inside of you!" he joshed.

Perceptor barely managed to refrain from rolling his optics. He could remember just how many times he had either lost a limb or gotten close to loosing his spark thanks to Wheeljack's experiments. But he had a point—he _had_ gone over the experiment thoroughly and worked alongside Wheeljack at every step, so it should be fine.

"Alright," he finally consented, allowing a small, brief, smile to rest on his lips.

With a chuckle, Wheeljack came over and helped him in adding the adjustments to his holoform module. Once that was finished, Wheeljack helped to install it in its designated port on his back, at the base of his neck cables.

It took a few moments for the new technology to fully integrate, leaving column after column of data to scroll down across his HUD until his processor fully accepted it.

He blinked, and when his vision cleared the first thing he saw was a very short scientist waddling into the room. No—it was a child dressed in protective gear several sizes too large. It was Jetta.

"Jetta?" he intoned as he approached her and lowered himself down onto one knee. "Why are you here? Why are not at home?" It was the time of day where Jetta should have been home after having been dropped off at her front door by the island's small school bus.

The young girl looked very disgruntled, and she frowned up at him. "Do you know where Mom is? She wasn't at home to let me in."

Confusion swept through him for a moment, and he shared a glance with Wheeljack, who automatically shrugged. Danielle was usually home at this hour. _If she isn't at home, where is she?_ He returned his full attention to the girl and said to her, "Do not worry. I will find out where she is." He lowered a hand down to her and waited for her to climb on before he climbed back to his pedes.

Turning, his optics sought out the telephone the scientists used to call to other parts of the base and island, and when he found it, he asked the scientist closest to it to call Danielle's home phone. He waited patiently as the man did what he asked, and when the man hung up and shook his head, Perceptor gave a short sigh.

He looked to Jetta. "I suppose this will take drastic measures," he mused before he moved over to a corner of the room and set her down on the floor. He transformed down into his immovable alt mode and activated his holoform.

The man that took shape was equal parts strong as he was scholarly in appearance. He caught sight of Jetta's look of awe when his holoform solidified, and shifted his stance a bit with a quite clearing of his throat.

He offered her an encouraging smile and held out his hand, even as his other adjusted the waistcoat his holoform was wearing just a smidge. "Don't worry, we will find your mother," he told her.

Jetta readily accepted his proffered hand with an excited grin, and soon they were out the door.

* * *

They eventually found Danielle in the base hospital, lying in a hospital bed with Dr. Dalca frowning down at her.

"Normally I wouldn't have put you in a hospital bed because of this," Dalca was explaining to her as Jetta and Perceptor came to stand by the bed. "But I needed you to stay in one place long enough for me to explained what happened. You experienced what is called an Anxiety Attack. It is different than a panic attack, but not by much."

Danielle smiled when she saw her daughter, despite the doctor's prognosis, and this caused Dalca to pause mid-spiel and turn to see who had interrupted him "Ah, hello," he managed, though he became quite hung up when it came to the stranger in his midst. "Who are you?" he asked Perceptor.

Perceptor chuckled. "It's me, Joseph. I am testing my holoform."

Danielle's eyebrows furrowed slightly and she rose up onto her elbows. "Perceptor?"

Using her mother's distraction to her advantage, Jetta left Perceptor's side and rushed to her mother, stretching her arms wide to hug her mother in the process.

"It is good you are well, Danyelle," Perceptor said as Jetta practically smothered her. "Your daughter was getting worried."

Danielle gave him a look that told him that she knew that he had been worried too, even if only a little.

"What happened?" he asked, glancing between Danielle and the doctor until it finally rested on the woman in the bed.

"As I was explaining to her before I was interrupted," at this Dalca gave Perceptor a pointed look, "she suffered an anxiety attack, a bad one at that."

"It snuck up on me," Danielle commented from underneath her daughter.

The doctor nodded. "I'm no doctor of the mind," he stated, "but I believe that this has been creeping up on you for quite a while, Mrs. DeClan."

Danielle tried to think back and remember if she had missed any signs that might have told her that she was feeling anxious. Because one didn't get anxiety attacks unless they feel anxiety, right?

She quickly gave up trying to remember. Her mind blanked, and all she could come up with were memories of her days mothering her daughter, making sure that she was ready for school in the mornings, that she was going to bed at the right time, that she was eating enough fruit, vegetables, and yogurt, that she wasn't going to go out and accidentally get trampled by any of the island's giant inhabitants…

She sucked in a deep breath and banished the memories back into their places. With a grunt, she shoved her daughter off her chest and took another, deeper, breath.

For all she knew, she had had anxiety from the moment her husband was torn from her side.

* * *

"Mrs. DeClan, can you tell me what has been troubling you?"

Danielle stared uncomfortably at the small, slightly-frail looking therapist she found herself sitting across the office from. She looked him up and town, taking in his auburn hair and thin face and the remarkably-Victoriana air that seemed to cling to him. _It has to be the waistcoat,_ she mused, allowing the thought and the sight of the reddish-brown waistcoat that almost hung from his shoulders to distract her some from how uncomfortable she felt.

She didn't let herself lay down on the leather couch she found herself sitting on, the one patients usually lay on when they went to see a therapist in TV shows and movies. She couldn't afford to let herself to make herself vulnerable in front of this stranger, even if he was the therapist Dr. Dalca had sent her to.

How was she supposed to speak to someone when she didn't want to talk about how she had completely _lost_ it? She was supposed to be _strong_ , strong for Jetta. She had to be strong because she's the only family her daughter had, and they were cut off from the rest of the world—Greenspan Isle was at least 100 kilometres from the coast of British Columbia.

Dr. Starek tilted his head slightly to the right, his sky-blue eyes peering out at her from behind his coke-bottle glasses. "Mrs. DeClan?" She was acutely aware of how he gripped the pen and pressed its tip against the paper clipped to the clipboard on his lap.

Danielle opened her mouth, then closed it. A wary hum escaped her.

The therapist leaned back in his leather chair. "You have nothing to worry about, Mrs. DeClan. Whatever you say will not travel outside this room."

She nodded once, but was unable to meet Starek's gaze again. "I… according to Dr. Dalca, I had an anxiety attack."

"I see," he said, and wrote something on his clipboard.

The anxiety that had been sitting relatively half-dormant deep within her rose up at the sight of the pen moving. Her chest tightened and her sight grew hazy at the edges as her head suddenly seemed to decrease in weight by half. She sucked in a deep breath and blinked firmly.

Finally, she grounded again. Her nails dug into her palms until pain snaked across them, and she pressed her knuckles against a few of the decorative metal studs in the leather armrests by her sides.

Her stomach flopped, and she swallowed thickly.

Her voice seemed to get lodged in her throat.

"Could you describe the symptoms to me?"

Taking another deep breath, Danielle tried to blink the fogginess from her mind so she could answer coherently.

When she finally managed to make the words come out, she found she could only whisper, half-afraid that if she tried to talk any louder she would throw up. "Um, I felt unsettled in the beginning…" she started. "And I was a bit snappish. I thought I was coming down with the flu…"

"Go on."

Her heart slowly crept up her esophagus. She swallowed. She eventually told him the rest of what happened. By the time she was finished, she was white as a sheet of paper and so out of breath she nearly lost what little was in her stomach.

And instead of feeling better in the end, she only felt worse.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she forced them back down and sniffed long and hard. _I'm not going to cry._ She cleared her throat. _I'm_ not _going to cry!_

Dr. Starek shifted in his seat and levelled a look at her that spoke of sympathy. The look made her heart tie itself in a tight knot, and she had to do everything in her power to keep herself from squirming like a young girl who had been caught stealing chocolate from the candy cupboard.

"You shouldn't be afraid to let your emotions out, Mrs. DeClan," Dr. Starek told her gently. "To hold them in will only lead to further problems down the road."

Danielle's eyebrows furrowed. _I don't care_ , she wanted to think, a tiny spark of rebelliousness rising up inside of her. _I'd rather shatter myself and still be strong for my little girl, than be emotionally weak in front of her and scare her._ She didn't say it, though, and instead found herself nodding in response.

A small part of her told her that if she wanted to find peace in the life she found herself in here on Greenspan Isle, she'd have to listen to the doctor's advice. She wasn't happy about it, but she could see the logic behind his words.

It was just so… _frightening_. She just hoped that she'd be able to muddle all the way through.

Maybe… she'd be stronger in the end.

* * *

 **So... I made it so Wheeljack and Perceptor had to recreate the holoforms because of Ratchet's absence. I have it that any of the bots who were on Earth before Cemetery Wind began to persecute them had holoforms created by Ratchet (because Ratchet is awesome).**

 **Sorry again that I wasn't able to get this up when I told you I would. Yay for college! T_T**


End file.
